U.N. News Centre: More than 729,000 Haitians vaccinated against cholera in U.N.-supported campaign “A Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)/United Nations World Health Organization (WHO)-backed vaccination campaign has reached more than 729,000 people in Haiti’s areas devastated by Hurricane Matthew, which hit the country last month, the health agencies said. According…

Project Syndicate: Three Ways to Improve Child Health Anita Zaidi, director of the Enteric and Diarrheal Diseases Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation “…Tackling [pneumonia and diarrhea,] the two biggest killers of children worldwide, may seem daunting, but we have all the knowledge we need to mount an…

New York Times: The Race for a Zika Vaccine “…Perhaps never before have so many companies and government organizations worked so quickly to develop a vaccine from scratch. Vaccines usually take a decade or more to develop. But researchers say a Zika vaccine could be available as early as 2018,…

Thomson Reuters Foundation: Nigeria fights myths, fear in polio vaccine drive “…Boko Haram’s seven-year insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic state has disrupted health services across Nigeria’s northeast and hampered efforts to get [polio] vaccines to children at risk. … And as fighting between the militants and the Nigerian army…

Reuters: WHO says funds secured for Africa pilots of world’s first malaria vaccine “Funding for phase one of pilot deployments of the world’s first malaria vaccine in sub-Saharan Africa has been secured and immunization campaigns will begin in 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday…” (Kelland, 11/17). U.N.…

Reuters: Pfizer offers cut-price pneumonia shot for humanitarian crises “…In what it called a major expansion of its humanitarian assistance work, the drugmaker said its Prevenar 13 shot, which protects babies and children against pneumonia and other diseases, would be offered in a new multi-dose vial at the lowest prevailing…

Reuters: Despite progress, measles kills 400 children a day: WHO “The number of deaths from measles has fallen by 79 percent worldwide since 2000, thanks mainly to mass vaccination campaigns, but nearly 400 children still die from the disease every day, global health experts said on Thursday…” (Kelland, 11/10). U.N.…

CDC’s “Our Global Voices”: Measles: A Forgotten, but Formidable Foe James L. Goodson, senior measles scientist at CDC, writes, “Between the anticipation of polio eradication in the near future and the response to emerging diseases like Zika, measles has become a forgotten, but formidable foe.” Goodson discusses challenges to measles…